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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30136809">Broken Tin Soldier</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/von_gikkingen/pseuds/von_gikkingen'>von_gikkingen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), WandaVision (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bucky Barnes in Bucharest, Civil War (Marvel), Fortune Telling, Hope, Minor Original Character(s), Other, POV Outsider, Psychological Trauma, Witches</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:15:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30136809</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/von_gikkingen/pseuds/von_gikkingen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>I saw this city grow from a few huts huddling together in the cold of the dark ages into the place it is today. Left and came back, left and came back, just like a tide. Always coming home. Finding the streets filled with stranger and stranger sights each time.</p><p>Like the soldier.</p><p>Made into a monster by monsters and I wouldn’t be human if a story like his didn’t break my heart. And I do like to believe human is what I am, even after all these years, even after all these spells and glimpses into the future.</p><p>But there is no spell that would help him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Broken Tin Soldier</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There he was again, walking the market. Gloves on his mismatched hands and a that mask of a neutral expression hiding so much secret sadness.</p><p>Guilt and self-disgust and pain, <em>always pain</em>.</p><p>He was hurting, this broken tin soldier. But rather than feel compassion for all the scars the years left on him, all the cold, metallic things still burrowed into his brain, waiting to be reawakened with just the right words... Rather than feel compassion I feel like running in the opposite direction.</p><p>He’s in pain, yes, but whenever he’s near so am I.</p><p>And I’ve had my share. I wish for no more.</p><p>“Will you tell us our fortune?”</p><p>“Not today.”</p><p>That startles them, the two teenage girls that are so visibly proud of themselves for being able to see me for what I am, even though there is nothing about my appearance giving me away. One of them has a touch of it too. She sees with more than eyes. World unravels before her as what it is, not as what it seems at a first glance to those who never truly give it a second one.</p><p>She could grow up to be a great witch. Or she could follow another path, into a faraway city and a hidden temple and a huge old library filled to bursting with mystical knowledge.</p><p><em>Or</em> she could take neither path and never leave Bucharest and be happy all the same.</p><p>So no, I will <em>not</em> tell her her fortune. Or her friend’s. Or any of the people who will approach me, urged by the same suspicion that I am more than meets the eyes.</p><p>Maybe I am. Maybe I saw this city grow from a few huts huddling together in the cold of the dark ages into the place it is today. Left and came back, left and came back, just like a tide. Always coming home. Finding the streets filled with stranger and stranger sights each time.</p><p>Like the soldier.</p><p>Made into a monster <em>by</em> monsters and I wouldn’t be human if a story like his didn’t break my heart. And I do like to believe human is what I am, even after all these years, even after all these spells and glimpses into the future.</p><p>But there is no spell that would help him and his pain weighs on me.</p><p>It is always the best part of my day. Seeing him go...</p><p>...</p><p>As a slav you grow up with fairytales that make you despair. Make you distrust the world. Remake old ladies into things to fear, fill every forest, every piece of wilderness, with supernatural threats. Nowhere is safe. No good thing will last. You will thread lightly upon this world, try your hardest not to disturb a single blade of grass – and still you won’t be surprised when misfortune befalls you.</p><p>That’s what you get whether you follow the rules or not. That’s what <em>everyone </em>gets.</p><p>Life is not a thing we can expect a kindness of. Or hope. Or joy. Life <em>is</em> and then so are people and they live to cause pain to others believing that will lessen their own.</p><p>The tales we tell are not happy things. But even the greatest monster, even the witch whose very name sends terror into every child brought up by slavic parents, has her kinder moments. On a whim, she will help the unfortunate. Let them borrow the burning skulls from her fenceposts to light their way through the dark.</p><p>I am no Baba Yaga. But I <em>am</em> a witch. And maybe it is the fullness of the moon in the sky above my city and maybe it is just the part of me that never wanted to reach for the darker magics reminding me – I was <em>not</em> unkind. I was <em>not</em> a cackling witch from a nightmare.</p><p>“You seem lost,” I say to him, that sad man living his sad story in these streets. </p><p>The market is busy, the words might be meant for anyone. Still he knows it’s him I’m speaking to.</p><p>Our eyes meet and he wonders – suspecting enemies everywhere. But who can blame him. “I will tell you your fortune,” I say. Only that.</p><p>“I don’t believe in that.”</p><p>I say nothing, merely take the ancient tarot pack from the pocket of my coat and nod for him to follow.</p><p>He goes where I go and brings his pain with him. And I have to force a mask onto my face to keep it from showing – just how much it hurts to be near him.</p><p>Yet in a way it makes us equals. Him in his mask, me in mine.</p><p>Only the cards between us have no secrets.</p><p>...</p><p>I lie. Of course I lie. No one can see the things yet to come in pretty painted pictures.</p><p>Fortune tellers have always been liars and I’m not even a real fortune teller. Though I do like pretending to be one.</p><p>People will always like liars a good deal more than they ever did the likes of me. I have never seen anyone burned at the stake for pretending to see things in cards...</p><p>When I play that part they don’t seem scared of me at all, these people who were raised to see witches and boogeymen on the corner of every street.</p><p>But the soldier didn’t grow up with such superstitions. He distrusts me for reasons of his own. Watching my hands carefully as I turn a card after card. There is a picture in his mind, one he’s suspecting behind every piece of glossy paper I turn around. A red picture, a twisted shape that is at the heart of all his pain.</p><p>His enemy isn’t any one person but it <em>is</em> just one face and that face is a skull and its colour is that of blood...</p><p>A tear splashes on the last unturned card before I can stop it. “Such a sad life,” I utter, in a language that is far older than the Romanian they speak today. “A long, long life. Too long to be spent under a spell.”</p><p>He doesn’t like hearing that. Doesn't like hearing words he can't understand. Even as the sounds of what I’m saying are still recognizably slavic they are <em>old</em>. Ancient. A language of long ago winters whose nights were illuminated by pyres made of bones.</p><p>“I see nothing,” I lie.</p><p>I was always going to lie to him, the faithless fortune teller that I am – but still I didn’t expect to hear myself utter a falsehood so great.</p><p>“You haven’t turned the last one,” he tells me. His face is calm, his expression giving nothing away.</p><p>He turns the card himself. Reaching for it with gloved fingers of his metal arm. I hold my breath and wonder if he still believes the mask of a confused old woman I’m struggling to keep on.</p><p>“It doesn’t mean what you think it means,” I say, sighing as I take the Death card from his unresisting fingers. “It stands for a transformation. A change. Nothing will be as it was before. Never again.”</p><p>I speak the last two words in the old tongue. Dead words of a dead era, now long forgotten by everyone but me.</p><p>It is not easy to be a creature out of its time. There is... pain.</p><p>For the likes of us there is always pain. The passage of time leaving us aching and lost. There is future to be had but how can we see it with all the things we have had taken from us forever on our minds, aunting our dreams... Making us force masks over our faces before we dare walk out onto the street.</p><p>“There will be future,” I says to the broken soldier.</p><p>“Aren’t you supposed to give me more detail than that?” he asks. And he smiles because that is what anyone else would do in a moment like this, but his eyes are those of a man who haven’t smiled in many, many years.</p><p>“If I told you – and I do have many things to tell you – you would refuse to believe me. And I don’t like to waste my breath. But I will say this again. There <em>will</em> be future. The days to come are still many. Your story is not yet at its end.”</p><p>...</p><p>The favourite part of my day – seeing that broken man walk away. Feeling his pain lift from me as he takes it away into that barren little apartment of his. And this time he’s taking one thing more as he leaves.</p><p>This time he’s walking away with <em>hope</em>. As much of it as he can make himself believe.</p><p>Only the smallest fragment. But it <em>is</em> more than he had before.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This sounds like I'm encouraging some cultural preconceptions... I AM, by the way... I grew up in said culture and it gave me an irrational distrust of old ladies and I find everything I brought up here perfectly valid...<br/>(I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, it WAS a great joke in Antman and the Wasp - but we ARE all genuinely scared of Baba Yaga, though... the childhood trauma is real)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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